Introduction:

Tuberculosis is an infectious disease of easy transmission. For tuberculosis’s control, appropriate knowledge, attitudes, and practices are essential, as well as relevant factors for treatment adherence.

Objective:

To characterize the concepts of three dimensions -knowledge, attitudes, and practices- in tuberculosis reported in the literature during the last ten years.

Materials and methods:

A systematic review of the literature was carried out under the methodology “Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes”. Initially, 1.720 possible publications were found, of which, after applying the exclusion criteria, 34 remained to be included in this review.

Results:

Most studies were published in 2018, and publications on the African continent predominated. The characterization of the dimensions is related as follows: knowledge was defined as the characteristics of the disease, attitudes were related with the social stigma towards the patient with TB, and practices were associated with seeking medical care by the patients with TB.

Conclusion:

There is a lack of publications on the definition of knowledge, attitudes and practices on tuberculosis, which hampers developing high impact research.

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